


Gold So Red

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 20:10:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16899114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: When their father catches their quiet first kiss in the kitchen, the brothers' lives are turned upside down.





	Gold So Red

The airy hum of frantically beating wings rises and falls in Thor’s ears as a small bee circles his head. It is not yet noon but Thor’s skin is already damp between his shoulderblades and at the small of his back, darkening his faded grey t-shirt and making the jersey cling to him as he works on all fours under the sun. There were no frosts in May, and June has taken a stance that will blend spring seamlessly into summer. The flowers in the beds at the edges of the deck bob their heads and sway in lazy circles. The breeze that rolls in across the lawn is weak and feverish. It gathers the lingering moisture of the dew from the grass on its way and then puffs it against Thor’s skin like the steamy panting of some great dog. The bee is still circling him, indifferent to the flowers and undeterred by the fumes drifting up from the varnish that Thor is carefully brushing onto the deck. He spent the last two weeks sanding and repairing it, promising his mother he’d have it ready for Loki’s graduation party. Thor promised himself this one last summer before a career puts an end to the lovely cycle of lazy vacations he’s enjoyed for the last seventeen years and leaves him only the odd days off and widely spaced snippets of vacation to look forward to. The insect flies up toward Thor’s face and Thor wonders if the perfume from his shampoo is attracting it, but the bee ignores the strands of hair that hang around his face. He feels its tiny feet alight on his cheek and then its hooked steps slowly make their way up toward his eye. If Thor swats it, he’ll hit himself in the face and probably piss the animal off enough that it manages to sting him there anyway, so he waits. He sees the dark blur of the creature approaching below his lower lashes and he gently drops his upper lid lest the bug walk right across his cornea. For a moment Thor feels nothing, and then there’s a faint tickle in the inner corner of his eye, irritating, but not nearly enough to warrant risking a sting, and he realizes the the thirsty bee has come to drink his tears.

Half an hour later Thor hears the screen door sliding open in its track.

“It’s wet,” Thor warns, turning his head and throwing out his left hand, palm forward.

But it’s too late: Loki has already put his foot down. It peels away from the varnish with a sticky rip as he bounces backward off his toes to land in the house again, perched on his clean foot and leaning against the jamb.

“How do I wash it off?”

“Mineral spirits. Hang on,” Thor sighs, and finishes the board he’s sealing, then grabs a rag and tips some solvent onto it before heading around and in through the cool blinding darkness of the garage to help Loki hop to the bathroom. Thor scrubs the stained sole and taps it with the pad of his finger to see if it’s still tacky while Loki twitches and squirms unhelpfully at the tickle of it.

“Wash the solvent off your skin,” Thor says, when he’s satisfied, and tosses his head toward the sink. “It’s nasty.”

“Yes, and you reek of it,” Loki agrees, lifting his right leg up to set his foot under the faucet so that he may soap his toes. Thor watches his brother wobble in front of the basin and sees his black curls bouncing off his pink ears. He makes a quiet huff and grabs Loki under the armpit so he doesn’t topple over onto the toilet. Eighteen and spindly, a heron of a boy, his nose always tucked into books about botany and his skin approaching the color of the pages, like a chameleon’s might if kept in Loki’s circumstances. Thor has forty pounds and several shades on him now. They’ve never looked less alike.

When Thor returns to the deck and resumes his varnishing he can see Loki’s footprint as a matte shadow on the otherwise glossy surface of the wood. They didn’t have an opportunity to carve their initials into wet concrete as children or to make imprints of their hands and feet, so Thor opts to leave his brother’s footprint as it is. He finishes the rest of the deck while his eyes play drinking fountain for three more thirsty bees.

Loki’s graduation party feels like Thor’s all over again. The familiarity of the memory somehow shortens the four years that have passed between the parties. It’s a fresh round of disappointment for the extended family: another fit boy who will not be following his father’s footsteps into the military. Odin’s family and friends were slightly more understanding of Thor’s decision. Pursuing a degree in fire science and getting EMT certification to be a fireman. Going to keep us safe at home, eh? they nodded, frowning nonetheless. Loki has a scholarship to the University of Wyoming, where he plans to pursue a degree in botany. The brothers spend the bulk of the party explaining the usefulness of the subject to greying relations who had their hearts set on soldiers.

It’s after eleven when the last guests leave. Loki tells Thor how pleased he is that he’ll never have to do that again and then makes for the shower. Thor hears his brother’s bedroom door shut ten minutes later. Odin and Frigga sit chatting on the deck, filling each other in on the day’s conversations and finishing an open bottle of wine. Thor collects empties, filling up paper bags and loading them into the back of his truck to recycle in the morning.

The whole household sleeps through Sunday morning and spends the afternoon setting things to rights and tidying up.

On Monday Thor does sprints through the neighborhood and sees brighter shades of paint on houses that were all soulless shades of beige and grey when he was a boy. They are still painfully conservative colors, considerate of their own salability and that of neighboring homes, but one of them is definitely lilac and another has a hint of coral. Thor still recognizes the names spelled out in adhesive letters on mailboxes at the ends of the driveways, so the occupants are growing more playful as they age. Fewer worries, or fewer years in which to have them, Thor isn’t sure which.

When he gets back he does squats, lunges, planks, and push-ups on the deck. Loki comes out and collapses on a chaise with a book. Thor listens for the turning of pages behind him, but never hears any. When he flips to work on his left side, the book is open face down on Loki’s chest and Loki is staring somewhere just short of Thor’s collar bones.

“Figured you feel asleep,” Thor says, and Loki’s eyes dart to cover the distance to his brother’s face.

“There’s something on your cheek,” Loki says, wrinkling his nose as he squints through the sun that’s reflecting off of the deck and off of the white boards of the house and off of his brother.

“It’s a bee,” Thor says, careful not to move his face too much, and Loki sinks back again with an amused exhale. He shuts his book and leans over to set it on the table and Thor sees the smooth white sliver of Loki’s left flank peeking out from below his green t-shirt.

“Don’t you get bored?” Loki asks, sliding down slightly in his seat and settling with his hands folded over his belly and his head and shoulders just visible above them. He keeps his legs far enough apart that he can see his brother between his feet. His shorts rode up as he slid down, and Thor can see the hair on Loki’s thighs shining white where it catches the sun.

“Almost to tears,” Thor admits. “Usually listen to music, but my phone is still charging.”

Thor’s body is a neatly crossed T, tipped over to rest on one arm, with only his right palm and the outer edge of his right foot in contact with the floor.

“Book boring?” Thor asks, and Loki shakes his head no and watches the bee fly away from Thor’s face. “Still fried from the party?” Thor tries.

“Mmm,” Loki says. “I felt like the main attraction at a freak show.”

Thor nods and laughs without wobbling.

Thor listens to music later as he pokes around in the cupboards and runs through the options they have for dinner. The wrinkled mouths of scowling relatives and their doubts in the guise of concern are driven from his mind by familiar words and melodies. His earbuds hide Loki’s footsteps, and he makes a quick hum of surprise when Loki appears at his left and puts a glass that’s been made cloudy by milk into the dishwasher. And again Thor sees the color of a thing Loki so often consumes coming through in his skin, and he wonders if Loki could become orange if fed on carrots, or gold from mangoes, or fuchsia with beets.

Loki tips his head and raises his eyebrows to ask about Thor’s smile, but Thor softly shakes his head and says It's nothing. Thor can’t hear his own voice over his music, but he feels the buzz of it in his throat. Loki narrows his eyes to call Thor a liar, but his mouth spreads into a smile whose progress is delayed by a hopeless attempt to restrain it, so that Thor sees the slow reveal of the long white teeth, and the lips that draw thin as they’re stretched wide by rising cheeks. The wrinkles at the edges of Loki’s eyes are plump and dewy, not yet crepey, and they are so close to Thor’s own eyes now that even in the dimness of the unlit kitchen Thor can count them - three little creases at each outer corner. Loki’s left eye passes Thor’s left eye and then their ears are pressed together and Thor lifts his hands and loops them low around Loki’s waist where the warmth of Loki’s flanks bleeds through the cotton of his shirt to paint the thin skin on the insides of Thor’s wrists. Thor has not pulled, but Loki’s body pushes closer until it’s leaning against his brother’s. Loki’s head and shoulders slowly drift back and Thor feels the sparsely scattered scratch of Loki’s stubble dragging across his cheek. Then the tickling brush of his eyelashes and the cool tip of his nose. And then Thor can see the little laugh lines at the edges of Loki’s eyes again. The same instinct that lifted Thor’s arms to belt Loki’s waist now lowers Thor’s eyelids so that he may better know his brother’s kiss. He feels it first as the click of their colliding teeth before their smiles soften, and then as a gathering of lips, and then as a grasping and sliding of skin. In order to move his head forward without pressing his brother's head back, Loki tips it to the right and stretches his jaw wide, opening his mouth around Thor’s mouth and feeling it flood with warmth when Thor opens his too. They both hum and their mingled voices vibrate through the bones in their faces, tickling them and making tiny laughter puff out their noses. Then the space before them abruptly goes empty and cold. Sharp pain bursts in Thor’s face.

When Thor’s mind catches up with his eyes, he finds he’s on the kitchen floor. His right earbud has been knocked out by a blow to the head and he can hear his father screaming at him.

“Of all the selfish things to do. How could you? You will not speak to him, you will not see him, you will not see your mother, you will not see me, and you will not return to this house for as long as you live, do you hear me? Out. Now.”

Thor sees his brother standing in the corner beside the fridge without any color in his lips or cheeks. Just the black arcs of his eyebrows and the jet curls framing his face, like an ink portrait on cream paper, with the round eyes that follow you and the confounding curve of the mouth that is neither a smile nor a frown, but is certainly not at rest. All the red in the room seems divided between Odin’s face and the slowly spreading puddle of blood that’s going cold on the tiles under their feet. The spill spans four of the ceramic squares and has poured down into the grout, flowing away from the pool in neat lines, drawing a sharp red X, much as a child would on a treasure map. Thor wonders what his father will tell their mother about the blood. He knows Odin will not clean it up. Loki might try. Thor looks over at his brother again as he climbs to his feet, eyes rushing over face, head, throat, and belly, trying to check for injuries in the vital places. If Loki is hurt, it is likely on the back of his head, but Thor sees no blood on the floor behind him. The neckline of Loki’s shirt is stretched and lying in awkward waves that hover over his skin, however, and Thor realizes Odin must have grabbed Loki’s collar as one would catch a pup by the scruff of its neck.

“Yes, sir,” Thor says, and walks to the entryway to slip on his shoes.

He hears the familiar squeak of the rubber seal around the door as he opens and closes it, and then the shifting creak of the wooden steps that lead down into the garage. He pats the back pocket of his jeans to make sure he has his wallet, then fishes his keys from his right pocket as he walks through the cool blue shade under the roof and out into the five o’clock summer sun. The air in his truck is hot and dry and the blood that soaked through the front of his shirt is getting sticky. Thor can feel the cotton catching and pulling against his skin with every breath he takes.

He looks in the rear-view mirror and reaches to examine the bridge of his nose with the fleshy pads of his fingers, gingerly pressing the skin. It’s swollen and bruised, but the bones beneath are unbroken. Blood is still trickling out from the broken vessels inside, landing with a muffled patter at the lower edge of his shirt where it’s bunched up in his lap. He slowly backs down the driveway, checks for traffic three times in each direction, and makes his way out onto the street with the same song still playing in his left ear.

Downstairs, Loki rifles through box after box of documents, looking for his brother’s passport and birth certificate and grabbing anything else that seems like it might be useful--tax records, bank statements, his high school diploma--hoping to get it to Thor before he gets too far away. Loki’s fingers feel dusty from the touch of old paper. The smell of basement has been collected and concentrated in the pages and he wonders if the scent is strong enough to linger on his skin. As luck always has it, the last box Loki opens is the one with everything he wants. He finds his own birth certificate first, with the wrong names printed all over it.

When Loki comes upstairs, his father is sitting at the kitchen table with a tumbler of bourbon. Odin’s face has sagged in the hour since Loki last saw him, drooping at the outer edges, seeming to slide from his skull like warm wax. The softening line of his jaw looks even looser now that it’s no longer clenched, and his eyelids are sagging low, hiding the top half of each pupil.

“You punished him, but not me,” Loki says. “Why?”

Odin’s eyelids flutter briefly and he takes a slow, deep breath before he looks up.

“He’s older,” Odin answers. “He should have known better.”

“And I shouldn’t?”

“You’re young.”

“Not that young.”

“He asked too much. It was a monstrous thing he did.”

“Was it? It felt perfectly natural to me. Right. Honest. Like being Thor, I expect. He doesn’t know I’m adopted, does he? He’d have said. Were you ever going to tell me?”

“There’s nothing to tell. You’re my son.”

Loki laughs at this without expecting to.

“So you say today. But yesterday you’d have said the same of Thor. What worth do imagine that word has retained? You just threw away your firstborn--only born, in fact--over a kiss. One that I started. Two criminals but only one punishment. I can’t help but think you expect better of the boy who’s got your blood.”

“Blood means nothing.”

“Is that why it was so easy for you to spill so much of Thor’s on the kitchen floor? Do you think it meant nothing to him? Do you think he’ll soon forget? And I came away without a scratch.”

“He is older, larger, and stronger-”

“And pressed none of those advantages. I doubt they even occurred to him. Is that what you think of him? A hulking, witless beast? At fourteen, I’ll grant you, but not by sixteen. Certainly not now.”

Loki looks at Odin’s right eye--the glass one he got after retinoblastoma as a boy. Loki has been in the habit of ignoring it and giving his gaze to Odin’s left eye, but today the blind, blank, unresponsive eye emerges as the dominant one.

“He took nothing,” Loki says. “He gave what I gave. So, should I go too, or will you bring him back home?”

“You’re still a child, you don’t know-”

“You don’t see. I’m still so small to you. Helpless and fragile. Secondary. A favor to do--or a duty. Raise your dead friend’s son like a good godfather. Or let your wife do it, anyway. You’re disappointed in Thor because he isn’t what you expected. Because you had expectations. I was only ever a burden to bear. Nothing’s changed there.”

Odin still hasn’t raised his voice or risen from the table. Loki wonders if Odin is drunk or sober or simply ignoring him.

“Perhaps you can’t blame me,” Loki offers. “After all, who wouldn’t want Thor? It’s only unthinkable that he could want me.”

Dawn seeps through the curtains in Hogun’s living room, dispelling Thor’s half-hearted hope of sleep, chasing away the respite from action that’s granted daily by darkness, and stealing the soothing chill of the night air on his aching face. He’s on his back on the sofa bed when his phone buzzes on the side table, shifting the loose change scattered beside it. The raw nerves rattled by the noise are soothed by the number on the screen.

“Mom,” Thor says, then clears the rasp from his throat before continuing. “You okay?”

“Is your brother with you?” Frigga asks. She isn’t whispering, but speaking as one would if they were short on air from being strangled.

“No, the last time I saw him was in the kitchen. Do you want me to call him?”

“His phone is still here,” she says, and he can hear her crying now.

The police found Loki’s car on Arlington Memorial Bridge just after four in the morning. The emergency flashers were on, the doors were locked, the keys were in the ignition, and the suicide note was sitting on the driver’s seat. Footage from a security camera showed a tall, slim, dark-haired figure exiting the car, nimbly climbing the railing, standing very briefly on top of it, and stepping off into the Potomac.

Thor expects a thorough search--ropes, boats, divers, and dragging the river. He wants a net at the mouth to catch Loki’s body so it can’t slip out into the Atlantic. But there is only the hollow reassurance that If anything turns up, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Thor intends to spend the memorial service hiding among his friends and hoping his father has enough sense not to make a scene at his own son’s funeral. Instead, his mother comes up behind him, takes him by the arm, and pins him to her side. Odin spends the service in the seat to Frigga’s left, where he can feel his wife’s hand in his own, but cannot see her or see Thor sitting just beyond her.

Thor wishes his parents would kill him or call the police. His life should be over. He murdered his little brother, one way or another. Whether it was the kiss or whatever words Odin might have said to Loki afterward as a result, Thor is all that’s left at the bottom of it. But his mother and father say nothing. Thor wonders whether she knows. Frigga has her arm twined tightly with his and is pulling him closer so that he sits lopsided, leaning over her. On the phone, he told her Odin said he’d never see his family again. She said His word isn’t actually law. Thor doesn’t know how to measure or imagine what she has lost--or what she retains.

Washington, Idaho, California, and Oregon are far away and reliably in flames. The fires there have been so large and so numerous that the states have called for help from Canada and are now flying in firefighters from Australia and New Zealand. Thor is hired by the St. John fire department in Washington, which sponsors his fourteen week stint at the Washington State Patrol Fire Training Academy. He hardly ever sees the old house he bought in the tiny farming town. When he does make it home, he spends his time cutting his lawn with an old push mower--or oiling and sharpening the machine’s blades--and feeling mocked by the wet, green, relentless growth of the grass, always back up above his ankles again so easily after being mowed down. He thinks of starfish, famed for their regeneration, regrowing whole limbs--whole bodies in some species--after being torn apart. Of what flesh loses with every roll of the genetic die and whether there’s such a thing as gain.

On a sticky day in early July, Thor is filling up his tank to drive home for the weekend when he sees a tall, thin young man with curly dark hair using the pump kitty corner to his. He feels cold sweat wet all his skin at once and his heartbeat climbs until his blood deafens his ears. Thor sees the man’s profile when he pulls away: a small round nose, curved forehead, full lips, and soft jaw. Thor drives half a mile, then pulls over into the gravel and weeds at the edge of the road, crumples over the steering wheel, folds his arms across its top, and soaks his skin with tears. It’s like being disappointed to find that ice feels cold, and he fears his sense and sanity went into the river with his brother. Every car that passes him--and there are so many, even on the long stretches of highway between tiny farming towns--keeps a tally of people who are not Loki. He looks at white haired old men with an envy that turns his stomach over in waves of rage, despair, and loathing--half for the oblivious octogenarians who lucked into more than four times his brother’s life span, and half for himself at being so hateful.

The daylight is long and evenly bright, suspending time. Haze blurs the sun into a permanent noon and the sky buzzes with the metallic drone of cicadas. The air is the same temperature all day and all night as the humidity smothers everything with the held heat of the sun. The world is green but blooms are largely gone, leaving only the suffocating scent of the foliage that blankets everything with its busy breathing. When Thor lies on his bed late in the day, the low sun throws its light sideways through the trees and sends the shadows of leaves skitter across his skin. The shapes look like masses of insects advancing over him, or like the thousands of transparent species in a single drop of lake water laid bare beneath a microscope. Like Loki’s last companions. The ones he took into his lungs. All the tiny thoughtless things that called his body their home for that brief period before decay and the river’s current tore his form entirely apart. Thor still checks the news from Arlington for any word of young male remains washed up on muddy banks, expecting to read that a child got hold of a bone and was found running around with the arc of a rib or the club of a milk-fed femur caught in her grubby hands as she chased a shrieking sibling.

At night, Thor dreams he’s dragging the river, throwing out a huge metal hook and pulling it in again, hand over hand, with a heavy rope. He always finds his father’s body with his first throw. The rest of his casts yield cars or tires or weeds.

He spends his summer in false houses filled with real flames. He drives the truck, learns to wield an ax, hauls heavy bags, wears a weighted uniform, holds hoses, turns valves, and sprints up and down narrow stairs and ladders while wearing a helmet that obscures half his vision. He learns to put out fires that were set deliberately while real blazes burn throughout the Rockies. By the end of training it’s almost the rainy season and he feels as if he’s arrived too late. He will have a month to fight forest fires before the rain comes to blot most of them out.

To look at a wood, it seems impossible that the thing could ever burn--water is so obvious in every surface. It isn’t like the man-made world of gasoline, drywall, and cotton. But it does burn, and to be beside it when it goes up in flames is like walking on the sun. Touching a star. The end of the world. Thor loves it. Time slows down as his mind speeds up and sparks drift into the sky as lazily as snowflakes fall. He moves smoothly through the motions he’s rehearsed hundreds of times. He checks his surroundings constantly. Accounts for his teammates. There is no room in his head for anything that came before. Only habit and awe as the fire rips through the woods, clearing away the choking undergrowth and popping the pinecones open, scattering the seeds. It’s always the same, and the work will never be finished.

When Thor returns to his own department in St. John, night has overtaken day and darkness dominates. It seems late, regardless of what the clocks say. The North has reared back and the sun can no longer climb to noon. Thor sleeps longer and deeper and doesn’t remember his dreams, waking as well-rested as he did on weekends when he was young. He listens to the wind in the trees and loves the sound for its specificity: it speaks only of itself and carries no associations for him. The curtains that came with the house twirl and billow into the bedroom on the breeze, letting Thor see the cool autumn air coming in the open window. The wind’s crisp kiss makes the warmth of the blankets welcome and ruffles his hair, parting it in strange places the way it does to the dogs he sees on leashes in town.

On days off, if he’s lucky, he can fall asleep again as soon as he wakes, and he gets respite from thought and memory and even from the chore of eating--choking down the heaped plates of chicken breasts, eggs, and potatoes necessary to keep his weight up during training required nearly as much effort as scaling ladders and chopping down doors. At home he only eats when he’s hungry, things he doesn’t have to cook: nuts, seeds, fresh fruits and vegetables. He gets his apples from the tree in his backyard. Elstar, he thinks, but isn’t certain. Gold skin streaked with red, and yellow flesh. He’s so accustomed to seeing the fruit in neat dimpled trays on grocery store shelves that it’s almost unbelievable to see it clinging to the branches. It looks as though very determined teenagers stayed up all night sticking it there. There are so many apples clustered together in such a small space they sometimes push each other off as they swell. He can’t work out why the branches don’t break under all the weight, or how they bore it when they were thinner in the years before he came. He can read where all the blooms sat this spring by where the fruit hangs today, seeing the apples as the pregnant bellies of the blossoms. He imagines the bees, lured in by bright petals and sweet perfume, flying from flower to flower with their pockets overstuffed with stolen pollen, spilling the grains everywhere as they unwittingly played the go-between.

If he can’t sleep, he stares out the back window, standing as still and quiet as the apple tree. By day the birds and squirrels come to stuff themselves with fallen fruit; by night the deer come out of the woods and the possum comes out from beneath the back steps. The stars come out to watch them too, and Thor stares up in return and wonders. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place is an idiom meant to soothe, so, naturally, it’s nonsense. Lightning can and does. And if it has, and there’s another world out there like this one, Thor wants to know if that means Loki’s dead there too, or if he headed off to the University of Wyoming to study botany on his scholarship. If that Loki has a better brother who turned his head away and kept them from kissing, or a brother who left for work as soon as school had finished instead of coming home to spend one last summer with him.

At the end of October, warmth, sunshine, fog, chill, clouds, and rain make seemingly random appearances, sometimes in the span of a single day. Candy and costumes crowd the shelves in even the least expected shops--and sometimes turkey basters and Christmas ornaments, too. Thor’s nearest neighbor is at least a tenth of a mile away, but Thor would feel rotten if a trick-or-treater came on Halloween and he didn’t have any candy to give them--and only assholes hand out apples and pocket change. He wonders if maybe parents drive their kids from house to house to save time, in which case he could have plenty of people ringing his doorbell. He buys a few bags of assorted fun-size candy and then grabs dozens of full size bars, too. He gets the purple fairy lights to hang over his doorway, thinking orange will look too Christmasy. When he gets home, he takes down the old curtains from his windows. They’re pretty lace things that he likes too much to throw away, but they belong to someone else’s life and make him feel like a stranger in his own home, so he wraps them around balled up plastic grocery bags and ties them off to make ghosts, which he hangs from tree branches in his front yard.

In the middle of the week, stubborn forest fires pull Thor and half of his department to Idaho. It’s the third time he’s been there this month. He comes home the worse for wear, but not too bad given the circumstances. Only three stitches. He sleeps on an old shirt, knowing he’ll twist and turn and tear the hole in his side open again. He forgot to get bandages on his way home, wanting only to slip into a hot shower and a soft bed after the doctor was done with him. In the morning he wakes with the jersey glued to the blood that trickled from his side. It clings as he gets out of bed, and then peels off and falls to the floor, stretching his skin as it comes free and starting the puncture bleeding again.

He keeps his antibiotics on top of his phone so he’ll remember to take them, and the method works, but the pills do nothing to drive the ache away or to keep the wound closed properly.

On Friday, it’s chilly and raining and Thor is worried that the warm weather forecast for Saturday won’t hold true and all the kids will be stuck wearing bulky coats under their costumes and plastic ponchos on top. The darkness that the clouds bring is welcome, however, and Thor naps through the bulk of the day, waking at five and watching the birds out his back window until it’s time to take his antibiotics. He walks outside in just his boxers to pick two apples for his supper. The rain has shattered into a fine mist that brushes his skin with surprising weight and he remembers that clouds are heavy--icebergs of a sort, suspended in the air. The homes around him are blurred away by fog and the world is melancholy and empty and if it doesn’t have the decency to be burning then this is the next best thing. A soothing absence. It feels apt, and unexpectedly kind. Thor is all that’s left. No reminders or expectations of anything beyond himself and his empty house. He eats on the back steps and watches the possum shuffle out from under him to nibble fallen fruit. She keeps at least one round suspicious black bead of an eye on him at all times and he keeps his movements slow and small so that she’s comfortable. When he’s done he goes back inside to watch a nature documentary, read a few articles about Halloween, and fall asleep again.

The chatter of squirrels wakes him to the tempered autumn noon. The day is as warm and sunny as predicted and Thor supposes meteorologists are the broken clocks of the newsroom. He makes a playlist of creepy music to put on from six to eight--the official hours of trick-or-treating in his neighborhood, though he hopes kids have the sense to ignore that, as it’s hardly a reasonable timespan when one considers that the houses are so far apart. His hair is a mess from all his sleeping, and a brush only succeeds in making it a silky mess, so he gives up and showers to sort out the waves, combing them into careful order when he’s done and then dressing for the first time since he got home on Thursday. He flips his porch light on, plugs in the little purple lights he pinned around his door frame, and sets the pumpkins he bought on either side of the door, uncarved and unlit, as they’re pie pumpkins and he thinks he might eat them. His lace ghosts look pleasingly mournful and wispy in the trees. Leaves make a satisfying rustle when they blow through the grass, as if they’re shifted by unseen feet.

It’s half past six the first time his doorbell rings, and at this rate he predicts he’ll have a lot of leftover candy. He opens the door on an Elsa, who is probably wearing the costume she wore last year--and quite regularly in the interval, given the wear and tear on the hem and sleeves--and a very young pumpkin, who holds--or more often hangs from--her father’s hand as she sways and wobbles up the steps. The pumpkin murmurs Twick ow tweet into her father’s knee, but she’s smiling, and Thor sneaks extra candy into her sack because Elsa has already gone bounding down the steps with a Thank you! thrown over her shoulder and she won’t see him doing it.

At a little after seven o’clock he gets a pair of clean white ghosts with neat bow ties sewn at their throats.

Ten minutes later the flash of headlights comes in his window and he heads to the door with his candy at the ready. The bell rings and the voice that calls Trick-or treat comes from the same height as the peep hole. The teenager on the other side of the door hasn’t bothered with a costume. Dark skinny jeans and an emerald green sweater and if they wore any other face, Thor would say Who are you supposed to be? but they’re wearing Loki’s face so Thor says nothing. Pale tapered fingers dip into the bag to steal a Snickers bar and the tall slim figure slips in the door with one heavy canvas bag slung over its shoulder and a scuffed leather suitcase held in its right hand.

Thor closes the door, sets down the candy, and picks up his laptop. The keys feel smooth and firm under his fingers. When he looks at the letters, then looks away, then looks back again everything is still in the right place. That never happens in his dreams--some detail is always different the second time he looks at a thing. Still, there’s a first time for everything. He turns off the music and hears the toilet flush in his bathroom, and then the water running, and then the apparition is back, smiling, and making straight for him. It takes the computer from Thor’s hands and sets it on the counter, then steps so close their toes are touching, wraps its arms around his waist, and stuffs its face into his neck. Its voice is humming, buzzing Thor’s bones at a pitch Thor’s body already knows and Thor grabs him and squeezes him and Loki laughs and then makes a low satisfied sound.

“Would have hugged you on the way in, but I knew you’d squeeze me and I would have peed.”

Thor stops holding his breath and the scents of hair and skin that flood his nose are so specific and familiar he could pick them out of six billion. He drops to his knees, hikes up Loki’s sweater, and tugs down the right edge of his jeans.

And there it is at the base of that smooth white belly, exactly where Thor is expecting it: two inches of raised scar tissue, even paler than the rest of Loki’s skin, with tiny dots around its edge where the needle and thread went through. Appendicitis at the age of eight. When it happened, Thor had been beside himself, certain Loki would die in the hospital just as their grandparents had done. Death was all he knew of hospitals then. Now they only make him think of stitches.

The doorbell rings and high voices call Trick or treat from a low altitude. Loki shifts to make for the door but Thor grabs him by the hips.

“Don’t go,” Thor begs. “Please. I never dream of you like this.”

“You’re not dreaming,” Loki soothes, and a frown crosses his forehead as his lips attempt a smile. “Come on,” Loki coaxes, and offers his hands to haul Thor up from the dark wooden floorboards.

They pass out candy to a Rapunzel and a robot, giving them great fistfuls of treats now that there are only thirty minutes left before the cutoff.

Thor’s face goes blank, then puzzled, after they shut the door.

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” Thor says, unbuttoning his red flannel shirt and opening it up.

There’s a dark stain on the left side of the grey t-shirt he has on underneath. When Thor lifts it, the dried blood comes away with the cotton and fresh blood drips down from the disturbed surface of the wound.

“What happened?” Loki asks bending to look at it and seeing a deep red drop gathering weight and beginning to fall. He puts his fingertip against Thor’s flank to stop the drip before it trickles down and stains his jeans.

“A burning house sort of splintered as it fell and flung its pieces at me,” Thor murmurs. “All but one bounced off. The doctor said my rib stopped it. The edge is messy and sometimes the stitches don’t quite hold it shut when I move. I’ve been taking the antibiotics, though. I never noticed any fever. They said I’d be fine. Are all the kids dead too?”

“What?” Loki whispers, then shakes his head. “No. They’re fine. Thor, you’re fine. You’re not dead.”

“But I can see you,” Thor explains. “Am I mad?”

“Possibly,” Loki smiles. “But you’re still not dead. And neither am I. Not physically, anyway. Legally dead as far as the name Loki Burison goes. But a rose by any other name.”

Loki tugs the t-shirt out of Thor’s hand and pulls it down again, tucking it into his jeans to catch the blood at his waist. He stares at the red on his finger and then brings it to his lips to lick it off.

“Can I still call you Loki?”

“Call me what you like, unless anyone’s listening,” Loki says, then slips his wallet out of his pocket and sets it in Thor’s palm. “In which case, call me this.”

The leather is soft, worn, and warm in Thor’s hand. He slips a Washington State driver’s license from the windowed slot on the right side.

David Colin Thurgood, born March sixth, nineteen ninety-seven.

The year is correct, but the day is Thor’s birthday. Regardless, it looks real.

“Where did you get this? It’s perfect.”

“Stark. He fixed all the records for me, too.”

“How did you pay?” Thor asks, scowling. “Your money all went to me. Don’t even try to tell me that weaselly little fucker did it out of the goodness of his heart.”

“God no. Debt. I taught him how to grow weed and shrooms in eighth grade. He said he owed me. So I collected. He gave me the profits. Helped me find you.”

“Do you have health insurance?” Thor asks, and Loki blinks at him.

“You’re serious.”

“Yes,” Thor says, slowly, because he can already tell the answer is no, and that his brother is, therefore, an idiot.

“No, I-”

“You’re not going anywhere until you do,” Thor tells him, and sits Loki down in front of the laptop at the counter to fill out forms.

“You’re the one who’s bleeding,” Loki notes. “Put a fucking bandage on that thing.”

“I can’t,” Thor sighs. “I forgot to pick some up on my way home Thursday night.”

“You’ve had the house since June-”

“How the fuck do you know how long- Right. Stark. Nevermind.”

“-did you forget to buy furniture every night on your way home, too?”

“I was training in North Bend until the end of September. I was never here.”

“You’ve been here the last month.”

“No, I’ve been in Idaho.”

“You’ve only got a bed and the stool at the kitchen counter. Aren’t you planning to stay?”

“Plans don’t mean anything,” Thor says, softly, staring at the back of his brother’s head framed by the blue glow of the screen, the way he’s seen it a thousand times before.

After Loki submits his forms he stands and stretches and starts opening every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen.

“No pots,” Loki notes. “No pans... one plate… one set of silverware… no food. Jesus, Thor,” Loki breathes and turns to stare at his brother, who is staring straight back into his eyes.

Thor sees the trapped, guilty look he would have expected to find on his own face tightening his brother’s features instead. Thor reasons that if Loki’s face looks caught, his own face must look like the wolf’s teeth.

“There’s a well stocked kitchen at the station and there are restaurants nearby,” Thor shrugs. “I carry out. Or I grab a few little things on my way home. Or pick apples.”

Loki opens the fridge to reveal a lone bag of almonds. His mouth pulls into a perfectly straight line. He goes to the hall.

“No curtains-”

“I just took them down,” Thor says, following on Loki’s swift heels, and it’s true, but he knows it isn’t reassuring.

“No blankets but the ones on your bed,” Loki continues, opening and shutting what should be the linen closet.

“It hasn’t gotten that cold yet.”

Loki goes into the bathroom, opens the cupboards and the medicine cabinet, and continues.  

“No towels, no bandages, no creams, no pain killers.”

“I don’t need anything to sleep. That’s all I do here.”

“No rugs, no sofa, no seats, no coffee table, no lamps, no shelves, no books-”

“A book was just another world you didn’t fucking live in,” Thor snarls, and Loki’s mouth clicks shut as his eyes go wide. The glisten in them shines more brightly along the slick pink ledges of the lower lids.

In Thor’s room, Loki sees the antibiotics on window sill by the head of the bed: a little orange bottle with Thor’s name on the label and the instructions that he take two per day until the pills are gone. Loki dumps the clothes from his bag and from his suitcase into Thor’s laundry basket, then strips off everything he’s wearing, chucks that in too, and walks silently back to the bathroom.

“You can use my towel,” Thor calls, and then sighs when he realizes Loki has no other option.

Thor goes back out to unplug his string of purple lights and to take another look at his lace curtain ghosts where they float in the trees. Then he locks the front door and plugs in his laptop. He turns the heat up to seventy-two before he heads to his room, knowing Loki is always cold at night and there are, indeed, no extra blankets for him. He shuffles off his jeans, trying not to twist his waist and bother his stitches, and hangs his pants in the closet before he stretches out on the far side of the bed.

Thor listens to the hum of the pipes and the irregular patter of water on the bathtub floor as the spray is disrupted by the shifting body beneath it. He wonders if it’s possible to learn the sounds that correspond to each position of the bather, or if the chaotic scattering of water makes such precision impossible. The squeak of the faucet being turned off seems louder in his room than he remembers it being in the bath. The rush of water when the diverter drops occurs simultaneously in reality and in some wing of Thor’s memory that practices an explicit devotion to the mundane.

When Loki comes back, Thor sees him framed in the doorway, hesitating as he searches the walls for the light switch, tall and slim against the darkened rectangle of the hall, his smooth white skin still blushing from the heat of the water. He flips off the light and slips into bed. They stare up at the ceiling in near silence and total darkness until their eyes adjust and the dark blues and greys of the moonlit room come slowly into view. Thor can hear his brother blinking and breathing. He takes a slow breath and rolls onto his right side, still trying not to disturb his stitches, but he feels the unmistakable stretch that tells him that he’s failing and he ultimately hopes the blood won’t soak through his t-shirt and onto the sheets.

“I’m sorry there’s nothing here for you,” Thor says, and squeezes Loki’s elbow with his left hand, pressing the flower-petal flesh that runs over round veins and springy tendons. Loki’s skin is hot and damp from the shower. At first Thor thinks the pulse beneath his fingertips is still elevated from the heat too, but he soon realizes it’s running faster and faster.

“What are you saying?” Loki whispers. His voice is high and tight. The echo of their mother’s voice when she called to tell Thor his brother was dead.

“I don’t have anything for you to eat, or anywhere for you to sit and-”

“Oh that,” Loki says, and Thor feels the heartbeat beneath his fingers burst briefly into a sprint before it falls back into its resting rate again. “Do you work tomorrow?”

“No, I’m off for a bit while this hole closes up. Why?”

“We’ll go shopping in the morning.”

“That sounds like a threat,” Thor teases, and raises his fingers to dig them lightly into Loki’s ribs.

The warm tones in Loki’s skin stand out more clearly against the blue morning light. There’s a subtle bronze band across the tops of his cheeks, and the bridge of his nose is dotted with freckles. When Loki’s eyes finally blink open, Thor runs the pad of his index finger over the tiny suntan.

“You’ve been outside a bit.”

“Mmm,” Loki agrees, and Thor listens to the tired vocal chords and hears the same nasal tone that used to whine Just a few more minutes on the mornings when Thor knocked on the door to wake Loki up for school. “I’ve been touring rose gardens. Taking notes and photos. Descriptions of the scents of flowers are the most impossible things. I don’t want to take anyone’s word for it.”

“You spent the summer sniffing roses.”

“Mmmhmm,” Loki hums, then stretches and bumps his thighs into Thor’s knees before he sinks back, boneless, into the sheets. “Season’s over now, though,” Loki sighs.

Thor can feel his face getting red. His vision blurs with wetness.

“Four months and not a word. Does Mom know you’re all right?”

Loki shakes his head no.

“Jesus,” Thor breathes. “She lost both of us.”

“He lost us,” Loki snaps. “Anyway, she still has you.”

They lie still, curled toward each other just as they were when they woke, swallowing loudly through their too-tight throats and listening to the barking of the squirrels. The creatures sound like small dogs with mouths stuffed full of cotton. There are more apples than the animals could ever hope to eat but they’re squabbling over them anyway.

“They never really had me,” Loki says.

“What?”

“I went to look for your passport and birth certificate after he threw you out. Found my adoption papers instead.”

“Which say that you are their son,” Thor says, crisply and firmly while his right eye twitches.

“Well you’re their son and he threw you away like trash. Why the fuck would I want a love that can be withdrawn at will?”

Thor has asked himself the same question. What kind of love can be taken away? And he’s answered No love at all. Of all the ways for a father to fail. At first Thor thought the shock of seeing the kiss would blow over and his father would call him up asking What the hell and why? and Thor would explain Because I’m a fool. I’m his fool and I love him and it’s all I’ve ever been here for and I’m so lucky to know it. Loki’s suicide tipped the scales in favor of fault and mistake in Thor’s mind. That the main test was for him, not for his father, and he had failed it. That he had asked too much--taken too much--from his brother. Taken Loki’s life in the end. Had Thor been allowed to read Loki’s suicide note, he would have known Loki blamed only Odin and said it was hateful and irrational to condemn love between two consenting adults. That Odin had ruined something perfect. After Loki was gone, Thor hoped his father might soften. Let his mother have one of her boys back, even if it was the wretched one. But Odin held fast. Collateral damage was a given in Odin’s world. Can’t make an omelette, he used to say, and his wife and children would point out that he was not a short order cook.

But now Loki is here and Thor knows that he did not fail his brother’s test, which means their father did, for Thor has not shaken the sense that it was a test. He remembers music, first in both ears, then in one, and blood pouring thick and sticky from his nose as the taste of metal filled his mouth. He hears again his father’s shouting, so loud in the small kitchen, and recalls the way the song in his left ear suddenly seemed incongruous and empty. But Loki hadn’t been listening to music.

“You heard him coming,” Thor says, the thought happening as much in his mouth as in his mind.

Loki runs his fingers through the mess of curls that hangs in front of his face, twisting and smoothing them after raking them firmly.

“We were already hugging when I heard the garage door,” Loki says coolly, a shrug in his voice. “I heard his car door close as your mouth opened. If you’d pushed me away, he’d never have known.”

“Why?” Thor whispers. “Why do it just then? We’d had the house to ourselves all day.”

“To know,” Loki says, with his eyebrows gathered in confusion, as if the answer is obvious and the question is foolish.

“You didn’t know I loved you?”

“Don’t be an idiot, of course I knew that. For fuck’s sake, Thor, give me a little credit.”

“Okay. God. Sorry,” Thor soothes, thinking Liar all the while and grabbing Loki’s hand to pull it up and tuck it under his chin, feeling Loki’s smooth skin catching on the stubble that covers his throat. Loki’s gaze is sharp and dark. Almost gloating. His breast swells and falls away in a quick rhythm that draws Thor’s eyes down to the half dozen hairs on his chest that show above the sheet.

“To know what he thought of who we really were,” Loki says, and Thor nods at the name of the second bird his brother killed with a single stone that day. “It was a kiss,” Loki murmurs, unconsciously running the pad of his third finger across the edge of his lower lip. “Of all the sweet, harmless things… one kiss and you were dead to him.” Loki shakes his head and his gaze slides away, looking somewhere under Thor’s shoulder, through the curvature of the Earth, Thor supposes, and probably out onto the East Coast again. “He rejected everything that ever meant anything to me,” Loki breathes. “And I’d done what you’d done... so I decided if you were dead to him, I would be too.”

“You could have been hurt when you jumped. Why not just run away?”

“For you,” Loki says, and Thor’s face goes smooth and he stares, unblinking, into Loki’s round eyes.

The sentence sways back and forth like the pendulum on a metronome in Thor’s mind. For you, meaning So that I could have you; and For you, meaning So that you could have me. Fitzgerald said An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional. But Thor doesn’t believe in opposites or absolutes. Everything is relative and interdependent. In this case, the end result of either interpretation is the same thing; the tick of the metronome comes in the center of the arc, regardless of which way the pendulum is swinging.

“For you,” Thor repeats, nodding and smiling gently, and he sees Loki’s lips puff out with the gust of the breath that had been held in his lungs.

“This way they’ll never look for me,” Loki says. “We’re only ours now. No one knows us. If I’m not your brother-”

“If you’re not my brother, then I don’t know you, and you can get the hell out of my bed,” Thor says. His voice is low and even and he doesn’t blink. “Not moving?” Thor notes, at a whisper, with his right eyebrow raised. The fourth finger of his left hand traces the curve of the little hollow at the base of Loki’s throat. “Well then.”

Loki’s skin prickles. He dips his chin and pretends to examine the back of Thor’s hand as he attempts to hide the helpless smile on his lips. He sniffs, and nudges Thor with his knees.

“It’s getting late. Get your big, smug, sappy, sentimental ass out of bed.”

“My big, smug, sappy, sentimental ass is sleepy,” Thor says, closing his eyes and turning his face into the pillow.

“Tough shit. You’re taking me shopping.”

Squirrels panic and scramble off the porch to leap through the crisp sunlit leaves when Thor and Loki finally get out of the house. Thor forgot to bring the pumpkins in overnight and the squirrels have been gnawing on them all morning. Pale flesh shows through where the orange skin has been scraped away by long teeth.

Thor snaps the cover in place over the bed of his truck and they head north to Spokane. It’s a little over an hour away and Loki sleeps through the drive, leaving blurry smears on the passenger window where the side of his face presses against the glass.

They fill up on coffee, eggs, and pancakes at IHOP and then Loki is wide awake and ready to give orders.

To the pharmacy first, for gauze, ointment, bandages, lotions, lube, painkillers, and his flu shot.

Furniture next, sitting on sofas for half an hour until they can agree on which one to get. Thor lets Loki have his way with the rest of it: he doesn’t care what the coffee table looks like as long as it can hold up a laptop and Loki's feet.

To Target after that, where it's Thor, we’ll need two carts; you’ll have to push one too. The shelves are overstuffed with pillows, towels, and blankets. Thor finds it all unexpectedly lush for what’s meant to be the lean season. They pick up another kitchen stool. Grab sets of dishes and silverware. Bakeware. Pens and paper to jot down the items they’ll realize they’ve overlooked once they get home. Pots and pans. Utensils with uses that can’t easily be gleaned by looking at them. Cutting boards and kitchen knives. Rugs and curtains. Warm winter clothes, pajamas, and socks. Toiletries and trash bags.

All the heavy things seem to find their way into Thor’s buggy while Loki pushes a weightless pile of pillows, comforters, and a memory foam mattress pad. Regarding the last item, Thor leans in to warn his brother.

“I’ve heard it’s hard to bounce on those.”

Loki goes pink and turns his head to hide his burning cheeks.

“The exercise will do us good,” Loki says, airily.

Thor sees the blush creep all the way to the tips of his brother’s ears. The blood can’t hide in the shadows of his curls the way it normally would; the omnipresent fluorescent lights and the reflective white linoleum floors light Loki from every angle, letting Thor see everything.

Dinner is demanded. Loki decides they’ll split a pizza. After Thor finishes his third slice he looks at the pan, intending to contemplate another if there’s a small one to be had, but the dish is empty. He thought they’d be taking half of it home. Loki says they might need to stop for french fries on the drive back.

Groceries are left for last. Thor thinks they’re buying too much--How can you possibly drink three gallons of milk before it goes bad?--and that they’ll need to freeze the bulk of it. Loki promises they won’t.

By the time they’re home and all the food is put away it’s after ten o’clock and Loki shoos Thor into the shower. After he’s washed, Thor comes back to his room to find Loki offering his bottle of antibiotics and sitting on the bed beside an assortment of bandages that are laid out on the blankets. Thor takes his prescribed pill and eyes his brother.

“Do you sleep mostly on your back or on your side these days?” Loki asks.

“My back, I guess.”

“Settle in like that then,” Loki says, patting the mattress until Thor is on it.

Loki dabs the edge of the hole in Thor’s side with gauze because it’s bleeding again, then fans it with his hand to dry the skin.

“Know what this is?” Loki asks, peeling apart the thin paper that protects a sterile dressing.

“It’s the most expensive bandage I’ve ever bought in my life,” Thor sighs.

“Mmm. Well, you get what you pay for,” Loki says, leaning over to look at the puncture. “And you’re paying for magic.”

Loki centers the amber-colored medicated pad over the ugly red wound in Thor’s side and lightly runs his fingertips along the adhesive edge, sealing it carefully. After that, he lets his fingers trail over Thor’s ribs and onto his belly where he scratches at the blond hair growing there and stares into Thor’s navel. Thor sees wetness gathering under Loki’s irises and watches it spill over when Loki blinks. This is the norm when Loki talks about subjects that are important to him, and Thor never mentions it. He waits for the words, and soon Loki sniffs and clears his throat.

“If you find a properly sealed jar of honey in a two thousand year old tomb and open it up, it’ll be as fresh as it was the day it was made,” Loki murmurs. “Know why?”

“Cool, dry graves are great refrigerators?” Thor tries, but Loki shakes his head.

“It’s the honey that’s dry. And acidic. When the bees regurgitate-”

“Vomit.”

“Regurgitate honey into the comb, the nectar from the flowers mixes with an enzyme in their stomachs and makes hydrogen peroxide-”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No, fucker, I am not, now excuse you, I’m explaining bee magic. Hydrogen peroxide and gluconic acid. Once it’s in its cell, the bees fan the honey with their wings to get the water out of it, then seal it up with wax because if you leave it open it just attracts water again.” Loki sniffs again and runs his hand over his face to clear away the tears that are tickling his cheeks. “Now,” Loki continues, “the honey on this bandage is going to make a sticky seal over the hole in your side, which will keep nasty things out, and it’s going to draw fluid up out of the wound. Nasty things like to live in fluid. It’s also going to release a perfect dose of hydrogen peroxide: weak enough for you, but harsh enough to kill bacteria. You’ll heal better and faster, and in the spring we’ll plant roses and wildflowers to thank the bees.”

“Are you still planning to breed roses?” Thor asks, and Loki nods and gets a look in his eye that Thor has already come to classify asexpensive.

“God, you’re thinking about greenhouse kits, aren’t you?” Thor groans.

“Usually. Now lie here and don’t move and let that grody thing heal,” Loki orders, then pats Thor’s belly and disappears down the hall. Thor hears his brother dragging the rest of their shopping in from the truck, ripping off all the packaging, and doing laundry and dishes.

When Thor opens his eyes, it’s still dark. He feels blankets being arranged over him and the weight tells him that there are more layers than he’s accustomed to. The scent of detergent is coming off of the covers and the heat of the dryer is still held in the fabric. He drifts off again to the sound of the shower running and doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep until he wakes to find Loki burrowing into his side, lifting his right arm and wrapping it around his own neck, letting his damp hair drip onto Thor’s shoulder as he pillows his head there.  

Loki won’t let Thor out of bed the next day except to go to the bathroom. He props Thor up with pillows and brings him brunch and dinner in bed. Loki eats most of it himself and Thor watches him sleep afterward, curled up at his hip, smooth and lean. Eighteen and still growing. At three o’clock he’d crowed that the first gallon of milk was already gone. It occurs to Thor that if he’d bothered to get a bathroom scale he likely could have tracked the growth of Loki’s bones, watching as the number crept up though no fat ever appeared on Loki’s body.  

At nine, Loki is hungry again but Thor isn’t. Loki sits beside him, leaning back against the headboard, with a bowl of cereal cupped in his left hand and Thor’s laptop open on his thighs. He’s watching YouTube videos with no discernible theme. Thor hears the ring of Loki’s spoon against the bowl, the slurping up of milk, the tiny smacks of lips, and the crunching of cereal. All things that drove Thor mad when Odin did them. Thor had assumed the sounds were objectively irritating. But he isn’t irritated. It’s all a comfort. Loki has milk in his mouth, not river water. He’s eating and breathing and solid and safe, gulping down Cornflakes onto which he has put at least three heaping spoonfuls of sugar. Thor can see the granules at the bottom of the bowl when the cereal is gone. He watches as Loki swirls the last of the milk over the crystals until they dissolve and he can drink them.

Loki leaves to put his dishes in the sink and plug the laptop in to charge. Thor shuffles down and sags into the bed, then pulls the blankets aside to let his brother in when he comes ambling back from the kitchen. Loki arranges himself under Thor’s right arm again, throwing his right leg over Thor’s thighs and wrapping his arm around Thor’s waist. Thor can feel one cool finger making a lazy circuit around the edge of his bandage. When Thor tips his head to the right, the hollow of his cheek rests on the curve of Loki’s forehead. They’ve done nothing but lie around in their pajamas all day and haven’t bothered to bathe, so the salty wheat scent of boy floats heavily about the bed. Thor can smell the last traces of shampoo in Loki’s hair, nearly lost to the buttery scent of the scalp, but still giving off a weirdly flat, fruity perfume. Thor cranes his neck to bury his nose in loose black curls. He had wondered about flirting and dates and dinners and maybe making out on the couch once the damn thing is delivered. But they share a roof, a bed, and a bank account, and they’re already on their second lives while the rest of the world is stuck stumbling through its first. Leapt the battle and landed on the throne. Loki put it all on red and walked away from the wheel with exactly what he wanted. Thor finds it weirdly reassuring: like he’s lying in the arms of the embodiment of luck.

“These are new,” Loki says, skimming his palms over the meat of Thor’s breasts.

Thor goes pink and turns his head away, grinning.

“You’re enormous,” Loki purrs.

“They have us doing that fucking CrossFit horseshit at the station to stay in shape,” Thor sighs, raising his gaze to the headboard.

“You look like your seams could burst.”

“I feel like it, too,” Thor grumbles. “Overstuffed. Like a walking turducken.”

“You put the turd in turducken.”

Thor tries not to laugh, which results in a snort and his whole body shaking. He pinches the back of Loki’s arm until Loki whines and bites him, then they soften, idly petting each other while Loki hums The Holly and the Ivy.

Thor presses a kiss to Loki’s hairline and feels his brother’s breast press into his side with a deeply drawn breath. He feels the shifting weight on his shoulder as Loki tilts his head back to look up at him. At this range their gazes drift and flutter, like birds trying to land on small branches in strong wind, until Thor’s left eye and Loki’s right settle and look easily into each other. Loki flattens his hand over Thor’s sternum, then glides it up to brush his fingers over the collarbones and hollows and the fine skin of the throat. Time slows to a trickle while their minds speed up. They see the light glinting off of each curved eyelash with the eclipse of every blink. They hear the grainy rustle as Loki threads his fingers up through Thor’s hair and loops the strands around them, tugging lightly as he rakes his hand through to the ends. Hear the tiny wet pops as lips part and tongues shift against the lower palates. Hear the hitch in Loki’s breath when Thor strokes the underside of his jaw and drags his thumb across Loki’s mouth, catching the damp edge of his lip and spreading it aside to reveal the full length of a sharp tooth. They watch each other’s eyes close as their lips meet, and they feel Thor humming and huffing a laugh through his nose, his breath gusting warm across their lips.

“What?” Loki whispers, and Thor smiles and nips his mouth.

“You taste like Frosted Flakes.”

Loki grins and Thor kisses his cheeks to feel the taut round curves raised by the smile. The smooth skin sticks to Thor’s wet lips, tickling Thor each time the seal breaks when he pulls away to set another kiss on his brother’s face. Beneath the blankets Loki’s fingers slide down Thor’s chest, getting damp with Thor’s sweat and slicking the hair below his navel flat against his belly. The stray wispy strands at the edge of Loki’s hairline look even darker where they're clinging to his skin.

They kick the blankets into a heap at their feet and Loki laughs as Thor’s nipples instantly perk up into two pink knots in the cool air. Loki leans backward past the edge of the bed and stretches out to reach the lube on the windowsill, then stuffs the bottle between their bodies in the hope that its contents will warm up. The rhythm of Loki’s breathing rocks his body against his brother’s in a way that increases its own pace. He runs his palm over Thor’s cock, feeling it rise up into the touch and bow down again under the weight of his hand. When he goes for Thor’s waistband, Thor lifts his hips to let Loki tug his boxers halfway down his thighs. Then Loki rolls onto his back and pulls his own pajama bottoms down only so far that his balls bounce pleasantly against the elastic waistband. He fills his left hand with gel, warms it between his palms, and reaches for both of their cocks at once. Thor sets his left hand over the bandage on his side to remind himself not to disturb the injury underneath it. He thrusts the fingers of his right hand through Loki’s hair, grabbing him by the curls and guiding his head up and to the left to put his mouth in reach for more kisses. Loki’s short, sharp breaths are louder than the creaks of the bed or the slick sliding of skin. A panted keen from Loki's throat makes a noise like a flute when Thor slowly licks the right corner of his brother's pink mouth, tracing the V where the skin gets thin. Thor knows Loki can feel the note echoing in both of his fists as their cocks flex at the sound. They spur themselves on, thrusting their tongues into each other’s mouths, trading slow wet sucks, and stretching their jaws so wide they ache with it. Loki’s hands tighten and twist and tug at their pricks. His fists work up and down fast enough that it has the effect of a vibrator, shaking deep in the bases of their bellies. They defeat themselves with moans, crying out against each other’s mouths and coming hot and sticky across their stomachs as Loki clings to Thor’s lower lip with his teeth. They can both taste iron afterward.

Thor wakes to the limp weight of Loki’s left arm where it’s still draped across his right hip. The heat and sweat that have gathered between their skin is welcome in the cool, dry room. Loki left his t-shirt on and looks cozy enough, apart from where his hips are bare. Thor tries to slip out of bed without waking his brother but he hears the mattress shifting as soon as his feet are on the floor. He watches Loki pull his pajama bottoms off, decides not to remind him that his t-shirt is covered in semen, and looks on contentedly as Loki pulls the top over his head and frosts his curls with come.

They shower, shave, brush their teeth, and get back in bed. Loki spends a long time using his phone as a flashlight and peering at Thor’s stitches before he nods at the wound and applies another honey-bandage.

Thor wakes Loki up at ten in the morning by rolling half on top of him.

“Oh my god,” Loki groans. “You’re so heavy.”

Thor shifts the rest of his weight on top of his brother and feels Loki’s stomach flexing to keep his bladder from being squished.

“Holy shit how much do you weigh?” Loki wheezes, shaking with laughter.

Thor dislikes the wheezing and puts his knees and elbows on the mattress to hold himself up. Loki’s arms are on the pillow over his head and he’s only wearing boxer-briefs. Their faces are still puffy with sleep. The daylight further softens their features, bouncing off of the white sheets to fill in their shadows. They look young and plump and smooth and inviting and soon they’re nuzzling each other, distorting their features as they rub and drag their faces across cheeks and throats and chests. Thor dips his head and pouts to let his lips reach Loki’s eyelids. Loki leans back to peck the tip of Thor’s nose. And then Thor places a firm, settling, stay-put kind of kiss on the center of Loki’s forehead and Loki lies still to let Thor kiss him everywhere. The soft insides of the arms. The bared knot of the throat. The damp hollows of the armpits, with their musky fur and flighty nerves. Thor stares at his brother’s breast: broad and flat where his own is round and deep, but both are smooth and flushed and swiftly breathing. Thor kisses the arch of the ribs, which makes Loki’s cock press hopefully up against his chest. Thor’s hair falls in front of his face and skims lightly across Loki’s skin while he kisses the flanks and the navel and the peaks of the hips. He mouths the pale appendectomy scar, gets up on his knees, and rolls Loki’s underwear down his hips, smiling at the shiny thread that stretches from the tip of Loki’s prick to the wet spot on the inside of the fabric. Thor sucks the sticky liquid from the cotton and and then licks the rest from Loki’s skin. Loki swears softly and cranes his neck to watch.

Thor can hear his brother breathing through his mouth. He shifts to strip the shorts off and then takes Loki by the ankles and folds him in half until his knees are beside his shoulders.  

“Can you hold your legs up like this for me?” Thor asks, and Loki nods quickly and loops his arms around his legs.

Thor kneels and bends, then wedges his hands under Loki’s butt and lifts it up toward himself.

Thor is fond of his brother’s backside. Thanks to Loki’s long legs and the perky curves of the glutes themselves, Loki’s ass gives the impression that it’s looking down its nose at you. Thor waffles between wanting to slap it and bite it--to humble it a bit--and wanting to worship it, though he doubts his brother would register a difference.

“Stitches?” Loki pants.

“They’re good.”

Loki watches the arcs of Thor’s lashes as his brother kisses the inside of his leg. Sometimes there’s a flash of blue as Thor looks up at him and Loki feels the flush on his face get warmer but he doesn’t look away. He calls his brother a bastard when Thor stops at the crease of the right thigh and shifts to set kisses higher up on the left leg. Thor doesn’t tease him when he gets to the middle the second time, though. He kisses everything, softly, and Loki can feel the heat of Thor’s breath pouring out across his skin--Thor is breathing just as hard as he is. The first kiss against Loki’s hole makes his head fall back.

“Like it?” Thor whispers.

“Yes.”

Thor hums and kisses him again and Loki squirms at the buzz of the sound through his body. Thor runs the tops of his lower teeth across the tender skin where the back of the thigh meets the base of the buttock, then gathers a generous roll of flesh in his jaws and bites, slowly and firmly. His grip is hard enough to elicit a surprised squeal, but not hard enough for a sharp, angry yelp. He doesn’t let go until he’s sure he’ll be able to see the imprint of his teeth at least an hour later. Thor drags his bottom lip along the cleft in Loki’s ass and the glide of wet silky skin over his hole has Loki's head rolling on the pillow. Then a damp, tightly puckered kiss is centered over his opening, ending with a pop and a hum. The next touch is a brush of tongue, wet and velvety and fluid, able to follow every tiny contour.

“Another like that,” Loki breathes, and Thor flattens his tongue and paints a stripe of spit from Loki’s hole to the head of his cock.

Thor doesn’t make him ask again, just licks and laps while Loki gasps and moans.

“I’m-” Loki says, but Thor can see his brother’s balls drawing up so he already knows; he lowers Loki’s hips and sinks his mouth all the way down around Loki’s prick, keeping his lips pulled tight. After three passes like that, Loki comes, keening, and then passes out.

Thor has to return to work on Wednesday, but it’s raining, so he isn’t too worried.

“I’m on twenty-four, off forty-eight,” Thor says, as he heads for the door.

“Is that your regular schedule?”

“Yeah.”

“Every day of work is separated by a weekend?” Loki boggles.

“If all goes well.”

Thor wonders what his brother will do with himself.

When he gets home on Thursday, he gathers there was shopping. The empty guest bedroom has become a makeshift greenhouse. Lights, pots, shelves, tables--and peat moss, sharp sand, and potting-soil everywhere. No sign of Loki, however, until Thor goes out back to grab an apple and finds his brother sitting cross-legged on the ground under the tree, letting the possum clean his dinner plate.

“You’ll have to make sure she doesn’t get so fat that she can’t fit back under the steps,” Thor warns, and Loki says if that happens he’ll just bring her in the house.

In mid-November, a cold night and a day of high winds manage to knock down most of the leaves, letting the trees stand tall and sleek in just their bark, limbs high in the air now that they’re no longer weighed down with summer’s green and the work of photosynthesis. The grass goes dormant and Thor doesn’t have to march back and forth behind a machine mowing it anymore; he can curl up on the couch and listen to Loki reading aloud and breathing while they wait for roses to sprout. The air is clear in the absence of the summer fires, and it smells of spicy earth and damp brown leaves instead of ash and lawn-clippings. Sometimes they crack the window in the bedroom to let in the scent, huddling together under down comforters, shocking each other with the cold tips of their noses. In mornings and afternoons the low sun casts the shadows of tree branches across the brothers’ skin, and the shapes look like long fingers caressing them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> please don't comment or repost.


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